


Lost and Found

by falsteloj



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, Ghosts, Halloween, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-27 19:49:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8414314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsteloj/pseuds/falsteloj
Summary: 'His life was falling apart, and he wasn’t at all sure he was strong enough to do anything about it.'





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My contribution to Gobblepot Halloween 2016 - warnings for dark themes and lingering typos.

"Makes you sick, don’t it?" Harvey said around a mouthful of bacon roll, free hand gesturing at the television in the corner of the cafe. Jim glanced at the set, scrolling news feed making up for the lack of audio, and felt his own appetite drain away.

On screen Cobblepot was presenting Barbara, of all people, with some award for women in business, while Nygma loitered at the side of the shot, dark eyes glittering.

It was like a living nightmare.

"Come on," Jim said before any other of his least favorite people made the morning news, "work to do."

Back at the precinct he was glad he had given up on his sandwich, his gut twisting at the stench of death emanating from the body on the slab. It was something he could never grow used to. Nor was the sight of colorless, lifeless features, long blond hair dark against too pale skin, still wet from the examination and the lingering river water.

He swallowed thickly and listened to Lee’s professional analysis, filing away the bruises around the girl’s wrists and the birth mark on her clavicle for future reference.

"There’s nothing to suggest it wasn’t a suicide," Lee said, finally, and Jim didn’t miss the way she pressed a hand to her stomach suddenly, her brow furrowing.

"Should you still be working?" He asked, too aware of the way they were surrounded by death and chemicals and surgical implements he couldn’t even begin to pretend to know the names for. Her anger sparked bright in response, reminding him that he had no right. That it wasn’t his place to question.

"It’s none of your business, Jim," she said eventually, tone flat, and he bit back the words that burned in his throat, preferring to take it out on the door of his locker, the pain in his knuckles distracting from the gnawing ache in his soul.

Sometimes he wished someone, anyone, in among all the well wishing and the congratulations and the assurances that this time was different, would recognize that Lee wasn’t the only one to lose their baby.

* * *

His new apartment was in the East End, in an area the realtor had assured him was on the verge of becoming hip and fashionable. Jim very much doubted it. The rent was cheap though, important now he was back on the force, and if it was damp, and cold, and echoed with the sound of a baby crying in the apartment above, it didn’t matter.

It wasn’t as though he spent much time there.

Instead he spent his nights working on the suicide case, seeking an identity for his Jane Doe. And she was his, because no one else was interested. It wasn’t a priority, the Captain had told him in no uncertain terms.

"You’ve got to let it go," Harvey had said, confessional in the corner of his favorite watering hole. "Cases like that, they eat you up. It’s sad, but that’s how it is. Some people - they just don’t have anyone to miss them."

Jim refused to accept it. No matter who she was, what she had done, she had meant something to somebody, somewhere.

To that end he visited the bars and the brothels, the hospitals and the homeless shelters. He showed her picture to the working girls who coughed and shivered at the dockside, and made Selina circulate it around her contacts. He went to Barbara, endured her mocking and her hoping, and added every detail he collected to all the right databases.

None of it got him anywhere.

Finally he requested an audience with the king of Gotham’s underworld, unnerved when Oswald’s cell was answered by a man who had once managed to completely fool him.

Make a complete fool of him.

"The Mayor is a busy man," Nygma said, self-satisfied at his obvious frustration, and when the meeting took place it sickened Jim, to have Nygma’s eyes on him, shrewd and calculating.

"No," Nygma said, after a cursory glance, and Jim was pleased to see that at least Oswald had the courtesy to look at the photograph properly.

He shook his head slowly, and handed it back to him, "I’m sorry, Jim."

Jim hadn’t expected it to hit so forcefully - like he had played his ace and still lost everything. It must have shown on his face, at least in part, because Oswald waved Nygma away and poured him a generous drink, smile growing when Jim didn’t argue and simply downed it.

"I was beginning to suspect I had a rival for your affections," Oswald said, tone playful yet hurt, like their relationship was based on something more than the necessities of business. "I’ve missed our little tête-à-tête. You should have asked for my help sooner."

The drink had rushed to his head, that was the only reason he blurted, too honest, in response to Oswald’s confession,

"I didn’t know if I’d still be welcome."

* * *

"Have you heard the news?" Harvey greeted him a few weeks later, clapping a comradely hand to his shoulder. “It’s a girl.”

Jim swallowed the cold dregs of his coffee, just for something to do, and said numbly, "I’m happy for them."

Harvey pulled back then, gaze sweeping over him like he was seeing him with fresh eyes - like they didn’t spend half their lives together.

"Has anyone told you lately that you look like shit?"

He choked, caught off guard, and Harvey continued,

"Because you do. Jesus, Jim, when was the last time you had a good night’s sleep? Any sleep?"

Jim shrugged, disingenuous. He had too much on his mind, he was too strung out from the job. He was afraid of the things he saw when he closed his eyes - the blood, and the screaming, and the crying mothers, back in Afghanistan - and the things he thought he saw when he opened them. The movements in the shadows, and the fleeting glimpses of something he got in the mirror, behind his own reflection.

"It’s just been a rough week," he said finally, effectively putting an end to the subject, and determined to bury himself still more completely in work, so he would have no energy left for his mind to go wandering.

There was plenty of work to be going on with, too, even for a city as blood thirsty as Gotham. It was less than a week later when he found himself standing on the steps of City Hall, watching Oswald’s latest crowd pleasing speech.

"And where were the police when it happened?" Oswald demanded, face flushed and spittle flying, the press crowding forward to capture every word, "What are they doing to bring these criminals to justice?"

Jim felt like screaming.

Because the press couldn’t care less about the bulk of his cases. The transient old men and the unclaimed prostitutes, their bodies emaciated and their arms riddled with track marks. The former soldiers, minds stuck forever out on the battlefield, and the runaway youths, their short lives over before they ever had chance to get started.

They hadn’t printed a single damn word about his Jane Doe, not when she was laying in the city mortuary, and not when she had been buried, quickly and without ceremony, on the city’s dime.

This was different though, because the Carringtons were rich and influential, and now some of Gotham’s forgotten victims had been thrust into the limelight, the papers scavenging for any scrap of information. Anything to shift the evening editions, illustrated with lurid depictions of Sophia Carrington’s corpse, mutilated the same as the rest, deliberately posed atop her regulation Anders Prepatory Academy blazer.

"I will not rest," the Mayor went on, grim faced for the cameras, "until Gotham’s streets are safe for our children. Until - " Their gaze met and Jim had the satisfaction of witnessing the other man falter, just for a moment, "Gotham has the police force it deserves."

The vultures in the press pit noticed it too and within seconds Jim found himself surrounded, reporters clamoring for his comments on the situation.

It would be a stupid thing to say, he knew, even as the words came to him. It would cause problems, and have serious consequences.

"The GCPD welcomes any and all assistance the Mayor’s office sees fit to provide," Jim said anyway. "They do, after all, have a much clearer insight into the mindset of the psychopathic killer than most of us will ever have."

"You can’t be serious," Jim said back at the precinct, his silent pledge to take his punishment with resigned stoicism forgotten. "What about my caseload?"

The Captain sighed, and somehow it was more chilling than any of the preceding ranting and raving. "You’ve left me no choice, Gordon. You’re going to get out of my sight, go home, and tomorrow morning, bright and early, you’re going to report to the Mayor’s office to spend a month as security liaison. As for your cases," the older man shook his head, the way his own father had, whenever he had done something particularly disappointing, "McKenna and Bullock will deal with them."

For a long moment Jim just sat there, refusing to believe it.

It didn’t sink in even as he left the room, pushing unseeingly past colleagues who had gathered to loiter and to eavesdrop, waiting to hear what the outcome of his earlier outburst would be. It wasn’t until he was home, in as much as the label could be applied to the place, staring at the day’s headlines, at the juxtaposition of Oswald’s photograph and Sophia Carrington’s, smiling for a yearbook she would never get to see the final version of, that it finally hit him.

His life was falling apart, and he wasn’t at all sure he was strong enough to do anything about it.

* * *

"It’s nice of you to join us," Nygma said coolly when Jim stumbled through the meeting room door, following the receptionist’s direction.

Harvey had tracked him to his apartment the night before, and insisted that he do the only sensible thing given the situation. Go out with him and get completely and thoroughly wasted. He had. Drunk until he couldn’t speak, couldn’t see straight, and passed out on the bathroom floor of his apartment, for once not caring about all the hidden eyes watching him.

It had already been light when he came to, and then he had had to scrabble through the dirty laundry and the empty take out boxes, searching for his newly issued swipe card.

"Well I, for one, am very happy to have you on board, old friend," Oswald said as Jim slid into the nearest available seat, something fond in his tone overpowering any sense of threat.

"Yeah," Jim managed weakly, offering a strained smile for the other civic staff gathered around the table, and added a sarcastic, "Thrilled to be here."

The job was even worse than he had imagined it would be. Because City Hall were more than capable of making their own security arrangements, and Nygma delighted in going through his amended contract, pointing out that it had already been signed off the police commissioner and his superior officers. The man’s smirk made Jim itch to punch him, and the transparent way in which Oswald relied upon him was simply infuriating.

It was one thing for the city to be ruled by the Penguin, sly, and cunning, but essentially interested in the same thing which drove Jim - maintaining if not law, then certainly order. To have it ruled by Nygma’s puppet was quite another, and Jim undermined his one time ‘friend’ at every available opportunity, something twisting inside at the idea that Oswald would trust the man who had tried to ruin Jim’s life over him.

He played it over and over in his head at night, alone in his empty apartment, staring as the shadows shifted, sneaking ever closer. If it weren’t for him, Oswald would be dead. Jim didn’t think it was too ludicrous to suppose that ought to mean something.

"I wonder," Nygma said one morning, taking in the baby-centric story playing on the news channel, "how Dr Thompkins is getting on with the baby. Oh," he pressed a hand to his mouth, all mock conciliation, "I forgot. It’s Dr Falcone now."

Jim was past it, knew that he and Lee had never been anything but bad for each other. And he was happy for her - for them. It just _hurt_. Hurt for all the moments they had shared, and all the time he had spent in Blackgate, when the dream of Lee and his baby living happy lives, safe lives, had been the only buffer between him and insanity.

If he had been there for her it would have been different. If he had put her first.

If the man in front of him hadn’t framed him for murder and caused her so much stress and worry.

"I wonder," Jim said, in return, pushed past breaking point, "what Kristen was thinking as you murdered her? How long she had been thinking of an excuse to get away from you?"

Because she must have been. She wasn’t stupid.

Nygma’s face fell at that, something almost human behind the mask. And then the set of his jaw was rigid, eyes dark and intent,

"So that’s how you want to play it."

Jim grasped for a comeback but Nygma was too quick, crowding into his personal space, his height compensating for his lack of bulk,

"You don’t like me, do you, Detective?" He didn’t wait for an answer, "And you pretend it’s all because of what I’ve done. But that’s not quite true, is it? You don’t like me because you’re jealous. It’s that simple."

"Jealous?" Jim questioned, incredulous, because Nygma didn’t have anything he wanted.

The man only nodded, a slow smile curling across his face, "I know you, _Jim_. You always want to be the best. Special. I’ve seen you with Miss Kean, Dr Thompkins, how you love that they still think about you, can’t quite give up on you. I think," he leaned in closer, gaze flickering to the door that connected the office to Oswald’s, "it just kills you, the idea that anyone could move on from the great James Gordon."

The implication was obvious. Twisted and disgusting.

It had to be, because the idea that somebody else could see what went on inside his head was simply too terrifying. He had Nygma’s shirt front bunched in one fist, the other pulled back, when Oswald opened the door, eyes going wide at the sight in front of him. Jim clenched his eyes shut, sucked in a deep breath, and let go. Took a step back and hissed,

"Just stay the hell away from me."

Once out of the room the anger drained away leaving nothing but a gnawing sense of loneliness. Of defeat, and bone deep exhaustion. He went to the washroom and splashed water on his face. Stared at his reflection under the flickering strip lighting.

The first time he put on a police uniform he had been so proud. He was following in his father’s footsteps, was going to make the world a better place. Now he just felt ashamed to see the badge at his belt, next to his identity clip, serving as a symbol of his failure. The city was teaming with villains, its populace at risk. And he was wasting his time arguing with Cobblepot’s paramour.

He let his feet lead him up the back staircase, up and up, until he was outside, staring at the city spread out before him. There was a cool breeze in the air, brisk enough to brush his hair back from his forehead, and he hesitated for a moment before stepping up onto the low safety barrier.

Perhaps it was some lingering impulse from Tetch’s hypnosis, but Jim suspected it wasn’t.

He just couldn’t help wondering, even as he stared down - down, down, so far down - at the sidewalk, what it would be like. If he would stop worrying as he fell, if he would find peace, if only for a moment, before all of it ceased to matter. Today wasn’t the day to find out, he knew, and after long moments reluctantly stepped down from the ledge. He had too much to finish, too many promises he had pledged to keep.

When he turned around he was startled, the breath knocked from his lungs, to find Oswald stood there, silent.

Watching.


	2. Chapter 2

"Is it really that awful?" Oswald asked, and his voice was like Jim had never heard it. Calm, soft, with just the barest hint of hysteria around the edges.

He thought about the question for a moment, uncertain whether Oswald was referring to the job, or to Nygma’s allusions. To simply being Jim Gordon.

"Yes," he said finally, because none of the options materially changed the answer, and it felt good to have it out in the open. To admit that something inside him was broken.

Oswald nodded at that, the movement stilted and jerky, and the relief dissipated as quickly as it had washed over him, leaving Jim feeling wretched and guilty. Wishing he could take it back and start over.

It was how he felt about most things.

His father had told him once that life offered no second chances, that you had to do things right the first time. Perhaps he had only been attempting to assuage his own guilty conscience.

"Do you know why I requested your secondment?" Oswald asked then, seemingly from nowhere.

Jim knew; everyone knew. "To put me in my place. To show the GCPD who holds the power." 

"Well, yes," Oswald conceded, "but that wasn’t the only reason."

His next words rang in Jim’s head long after they were spoken. Kept him awake long into the early hours of the morning, testing their sincerity, even as he plotted, once again, his Jane Doe’s last known movements.

The shadows were crowded in all around him, and the air was cold, icy, despite the reading on the thermostat. He could feel the eyes on the back of his neck, the grasping of fingers that never quite reached him. He refused to give into it, the memory warming him through, warding off the worst of it,

"Whether you like it or not, you’re my friend, Jim, and I was worried about you."

* * *

The following day brought news that Carrington’s killer had been captured.

"You’re just jealous I made the collar," Harvey said, over the phone, and Jim couldn’t help but protest, the subject still raw,

"I’m not jealous." 

"Only a couple of weeks to go," Harvey soothed, too perceptive. "Try not to kill him. Although," Jim could hear the smile on his face, "if somebody else wants to give it a go, don’t try too hard to stop them either."

Jim thought about the prospect when Oswald met him in the lobby after lunch, keen eyes searching his face for _something_. Whatever it was he found there seemed to satisfy him for the moment, and Jim fell into step beside him, glad to see that Nygma was otherwise preoccupied for the duration. He couldn’t bear to know if they had talked about him. Laughed about him.

If they simply hadn’t cared enough to mention it, lost in each other, his failed attempt at ending it all entirely forgotten.

Because he could never follow Harvey’s advice, he knew. It was his training, he could argue. Professional pride, even. But it wouldn’t be true, not strictly speaking. He wouldn’t stand back and leave Oswald an unprotected target because the other man had spoken the truth. Whether Jim liked it or not, they were friends, and he didn’t have enough of those to start letting them die on him.

"That girl in the photograph," Oswald explained as he lead the way to a waiting car, cutting through his thoughts. "I’ve found someone with information."

Jim clutched at the other man’s arm, the movement instinctive and involuntary, and Oswald kept his voice soft, but he didn’t look away, challenging,

"I had to be rather persuasive."

For once Jim couldn’t find the words to chastise him, not even when they reached their destination and he saw the damage. The thick bandages swathed around the man’s left hand, and the bruises blossoming along his jawline.

"I rent her a room," the man said, accent thick and English stilted, frightened gaze wandering to where Oswald stood, arms folded, because they all knew money wasn’t the only thing demanded in this place in exchange for accommodation. "But she had to leave."

Oswald made a noise, impatient, and the correction came in a hurried rush,

"I made her leave. She was too strange. Screaming, crying, seeing things that were not there. Ghosts. Demons." He shook his head. "Maybe in the old country, but here… Here it scared the punters."

Jim swallowed, because somehow he could see it all too clearly. The dark eyes that watched from behind the shadows, and the growled gibberish that had emanated from the other girls’ mouths when they were talking. The tears and the fear, and the desperate need to escape from it.

He understood only too well.

"She should have been locked up in the asylum," the proprietor finished, disgusted.

Jim sought out Oswald’s gaze himself, because Arkham was always going to be a sore point. He had read the reports, the dispassionate transcripts of everything Oswald had said and done during Strange’s experiments. The images they conjured were seared into his own mind, filled his nightmares. But it wasn’t Oswald’s expression that arrested his attention.

It was the blur of movement he caught from the corner of his eye, and then it was he who was moving, adrenaline pumping as he barreled into Gotham’s kingpin, pushed him away and down to the floor. He didn’t even feel the pain, not until afterwards. He was too busy praying that his best had been good enough.

Above them the newly formed hole in the ceiling was gaping, and there was debris and shattered glass all around them. The weight of plaster and floorboard on his back was crushing and, as his senses began to come back to him, the rapid pounding of Oswald’s heart was almost audible, the sensation enough to make Jim grin stupidly,

"You’re alright."

Fingers clutched awkwardly at his jacket, because they couldn’t quite make eye contact.

"I will be."

Later, after talk of bombs and retribution had given way to recognition that the building had simply been rotten, after an ER doctor had quipped about occupational hazards while she patched him up, and told him he was lucky to have avoided anything more serious than a flesh wound, Oswald found his way back to Jim’s side, his clothes and hair somewhat dusty, but otherwise seemingly none the worse for the experience.

"You saved my life again," he said, and the smile he directed at him was almost as open - almost as genuine - as the ones Jim remembered. The ones that had made something in his chest clench, even when he had refused to acknowledge it. Then it was gone, and his tone was harsher, accusing, "You must be accumulating quite the favor."

Perhaps the meds had started to kick in, perhaps he’d taken more of a hit to the head than he’d first thought. Perhaps he just wanted to see that smile again, and didn’t want to examine the reasons too closely.

"Friends don’t owe each other favors, do they?"

* * *

"You don’t need to see me to the door," Jim said when all his arguments had fallen on deaf ears and Oswald really had insisted on accompanying him back to his miserable apartment building. Because the staircase was steep and narrow and Oswald was limping badly. Because he was an unrepentant murderer.

"It’s the least I can do," Oswald assured, and Jim couldn’t find the words to dissuade him. Couldn’t say even that he was too put out at the prospect of not proceeding alone, the lights flickering ominously overhead as usual. He fumbled with the keys when they reached his number, and Oswald followed him inside without waiting for an invitation.

Fixed them coffee, black because the milk in the fridge was long out of date, and Jim just left it on the table, unable to stomach it. Oswald sipped at it, gaze taking in the mess of his life. The boxes he still hadn’t got around to unpacking, and the piles of unopened junk mail and unwashed crockery. It fell, finally, on the folders he had dedicated to his mysterious Jane Doe. The mortuary photos vivid against the photocopied police reports.

Jim supposed it must look rather morbid, now he thought about it.

"I had hoped to find her name for you," Oswald said, abandoning his own coffee. "Instead I found you a death trap."

He had found him a name, an alias to look into, and new leads to follow up on. He had given him hope, and that was much more than he had had in a long time. Jim didn’t know how to verbalize that, and said instead,

"Someone, somewhere, knows who she is. They have to."

The other man looked at his hands, and Jim didn't need to be told who he was thinking of when he said, "Just because they haven't come forward doesn't mean they don't want to." 

Jim shifted closer, until their knees were almost touching, and searched for the right words to say.

Perhaps there just weren't any.

"I begged them to let me attend her funeral," Oswald continued, and there was no accusation there, though Jim knew he deserved it. "She didn't have anyone else."

"They read your eulogy," Jim offered, clumsily, and perhaps it was the painkillers, perhaps it was the ever creeping darkness, but Oswald was the only brightness in the room and Jim couldn’t look away, transfixed, like a moth drawn to a flame.

His eyes were over bright, lost for words, and Jim might have confessed anything in that moment. Might have spilled all his secrets, spurred on by the strange sense of intimacy and the freckles on Oswald’s nose.

But the shrill ringing of a cell phone cut through the silence, and Jim slouched back into the sofa as Oswald answered it, the voice on the other end of the line too clear, even when Oswald turned his head away. The bulb dipped low as Jim watched the conversation, then flamed bright, for a moment, before going out completely. There was still a lamp in the corner, enough light to see by, but Oswald ended the call, distinctly uncomfortable. 

"He can't be trusted," Jim said, knowing better than to let the coming and going of the electrics unnerve him. It was what they wanted. "You must know he's only using you."

"Don't interfere, Jim," Oswald warned, without any real bite, and then he was alone again. Except not quite. Because something rattled in the bedroom, a cupboard door slammed in the kitchen. 

Jim was too tired to care, head swimming. He fell asleep on the sofa, fitful nightmares following one after the other, and woke to the grim Gotham early morning light, and Harvey's voice through his cell phone,

"You've been reprieved," his partner said, explaining that he was being put back on regular duties. "It seems the Penguin's finally gotten sick of you."


End file.
